Barton: Perils of Sandfly's catwoman

I’m like a lot of politicians when it comes to taking sides on a complex issue.

Like cats vs. dogs.

When it comes to cats, I was for them before I was against them.

Now I’m a dog person. I went over to the canine side several years ago.

That doesn’t mean I hate cats. I have an old cat who acts like he’s the master of his domain. If he could work the phone with his paws, he’d call out for pizza at 1 a.m. and have his cat pals over to watch all-night reruns of “My Cat from Hell” on Animal Planet.

And that brings me to Nancy Rowland. She cleans houses for a living. If she’s not the mother of Savannah’s cat people, she’s in the running.

And I feel sorry for her. But not because she’s a cat person. Instead, she may soon have to choose which of her cats live, and which ones go night-night at the Chatham County Animal Control shelter.

For the past eight years, Rowland has been the caretaker of a colony of about two dozen or so feral cats that live in a wooded area in Sandfly behind the Norwood Plaza shopping center on Skidaway Road. That’s the same neighborhood where Rowland lives.

She said she has fed and vaccinated them during this time. She had them spayed and neutered, with help from the Milton Project. That’s a private group that traps feral cats, fixes them so they can’t reproduce, then releases them. She said her cats are fixtures in the neighborhood, to the point where people ask her about them and donate food and money to support them.

“I’ve never had a negative comment in eight years,” Rowland said. “These are healthy, beautiful cats. I even think they’re spoiled. When people donate food that the cats won’t eat, I have to mix it with the good stuff.”

(See, even cats in the wild are picky eaters. I know dogs with full stomachs — like mine — who will eat pine cones.)

Then someone coughed up the equivalent of a fur ball. Rowland said a man who lives near the cat colony, who had set cat traps in his yard baited with canned food, told authorities that he contracted ringworm from feral cats in that area, including hers. So the bureaucracy sprang into action. It forced her to get a lawyer to fight the charge that her cat colony in Sandfly is a “nuisance” — as is she for tending to it.

A Recorder’s Court judge, she said, agreed. Rowland said she was told on Monday to clear out her cat houses by today. Then, sometime after that, Animal Control will go out there and try to trap these cats and take them to the shelter, which, according to recent news reports, is bursting at the seams with unwanted animals.

“They said I could go out there and pick eight of them to save,” Rowland said. “But feral cats are not adoptable. So the rest are going to get put down. They’re sitting ducks.”

This isn’t an easy call.

On one hand, I can understand that living next to two dozen cats isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. It’s probably means extra helpings of kitty poop and the aroma of male cat spray in the morning. But on the other hand, her cats aren’t the only feral cats roaming around there. And, because they’ve been fixed (their ears are clipped so Rowland can tell them apart from non-colony cats), her cats aren’t having kittens. Thus her colony, in theory, will someday die out.

If I had a third hand, I’d add that the overriding problem are the knuckleheads in Chatham County who decide to own pets but don’t have them spayed and neutered, which contributes to chronic overpopulation and animal abandonment. Yes, these operations can get expensive. That’s why a low-cost, spay-neuter clinic is needed in Savannah, more than ever.

It’s too bad that a compromise couldn’t have been reached, like giving Sandfly’s catwoman the time to move her felines to private property (the current site, she said, is public land). Then she wouldn’t have to pick which one lives or dies.

That’s got to be tough. Eight years is a long time to be with an animal. In the case of a bunch of cats, it probably feels like 80 years.

“This cat colony hasn’t cost Chatham County a dime,” she said, “and now it’s being torn down because this man hollered ‘ringworm.’ That’s ridiculous.”

As a dog person who still believes in letting sleeping cats lie, I’d have to agree.

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We are not looking for someone to take the whole colony, instead asking anyone that may want a mouser or just an outside cat to contact the caretaker. The cats will be vetted before release to their new home. This includes spay/neuter, rabies vaccination and testing for FeL/FIV.

The cats just can't be released at their new home. The cats' first move would be to head home. To prevent that from happening, the cats will need to be held in a safe area for several weeks to help them acclimate to their new home.

Thank you Mr. Barton for your support of Trap Neuter Return, changing our ordinances to reflect responsible colony management, and most importantly, a local low cost spay/neuter clinic.

I saw this on WSAV this morning. If these cats have been fixed why were there people holding kittens and when did cats rights become more important than human rights? I understand her heart is in the right place. No one wants to see an animal go hungry but why is she feeding these cats on public property and not at her own house. Why can't she take them there? I get that you cant move a colony in a matter of day but if she is looking for private property to move them to why not her own or does she not want 20 cats living on her property, but is ok with them destroying other peoples?